About four years ago, over the period of a year, 14 friends and family members of mine passed on. While I knew that life is eternal and that each of these wonderful individuals was continuing on with God, our Father, I began to feel quite a void in my own life. Around the end of that year, I noticed that a familiar Bible passage was frequently appearing in the Christian Science Bible Lesson. It was Jesus’ command: “Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils” (Matthew 10:8).
As I pondered this directive, I prayed to understand how I could be more obedient to these ideas. Immediately my thought jumped to “cleanse the lepers,” and I realized I had relegated a number of people to the “leper” category—those to be shunned or at least avoided. There were some developers in my community who had destroyed wetlands to build a shopping center; a school official who I felt had treated my husband and me rather shabbily; some women in my bridge group who continually complained; etc. I realized that the needed cleansing was not up to these people; the cleansing had to come in my own thought through seeing that each of them is an idea of God, perfect and sinless, worthy of my respect and love. When I mentally separated those individuals from any unpleasant behavior, I was able to see them, to a degree, as God sees them, and in this way free myself, and help to shield them, from sinful beliefs.
Next command to consider … raise the dead! That also really fit in with what I had been dealing with. I saw the need to “raise the dead” in my thought, not only to affirm the eternal life of every individual, but to see that I could not experience the death of any good in my own experience. Nothing good could ever be taken from me because, as God’s reflection, I include all good in the form of companionship, right activity, and purpose. The emptiness in my life just faded away as I pondered these truths.
